With You in my Heart
by HecateA
Summary: Thalia's life is 300% harder when you think of the secret she carried while living it. Oneshot. 8/16.


**My big sister heart goes out to Thalia Grace and did so from the moment that she appeared in The Lost Hero. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the world they are set in.**

* * *

**With You in my Heart**

* * *

Thalia Grace was actively and shamelessly playing with her food.

"Thalia, please eat your supper." Her mother said. She was dressed up for some party tonight- her blond curls meticulously falling over her shoulders, her lips a bright, smacking red, her blue eyes lined with the perfect makeup and a deep blue dress showing off whatever curves hadn't been burned off by the booze and drugs, and some leg on the side. She was waiting for Thalia to finish up her meal to go- and she wasn't even close.

"I didn't _want _supper." Thalia said tightly.

"Well I didn't ask if you wanted it or not, I asked you to eat it."

"Yeah, there are lots of things you don't ask." Thalia said.

"Thalia Marie Grace will you-"

"No, I will not." Thalia snapped getting to her feet. "Just like you _will not_ stay home, just like you _will not _stop drinking, just like you _will not _look for him, just like you _did not _take care of Jason!"

That hadn't been supposed to come out of her mouth. But it did. And part of Thalia was upset that it had –because that wasn't how you talked to your mother (especially your possibly drunk mother), it wasn't something your brought up and said to someone's face (especially a possibly drunk someone's face) and it wasn't something you yelled. But part of her was happy because she had been holding that in for far too long.

"Thalia," her mother snapped getting to her feet. "How dare you…"

"Easily." Thalia spat. "Have fun while I walk around town putting posters up tonight."

She was storming out of the kitchen. "Thalia don't you dare leave this apartment tonight or you will be _so _grounded! We will talk about this later because that is not a way to be-"

She slammed the door behind her and breathed out.

"-have," she finished for her mother. She screwed up her voice in an imitation. "'That is not a way to behave'. Well guess what, Mom. Nor is running away."

She looked around her room, for the first time realising how real that could be. Not just a deep wish. She looked at the posters of Jason she kept printing out at the public library until she ran out of quarters, and at school until they kicked her out of the computer lab. She looked at the framed picture on her desk. She looked at the bed she didn't even sleep in anymore, and the window she didn't open because she never opened it when Jason was around because he was always climbing everything. She looked at the laundry basket that was empty because she didn't bother with laundry anymore and there was none of his, and the drawers that were filled with things that he could cut himself with or choke on that she always kept closed because he always waddled into her room and she didn't want a sequel to the stapler incident…

It was like she was looking at Jason. She was looking at Jason, but her baby brother was gone- how twisted was that? She was looking at Jason and of how big a part he was in her life and her happiness and her being able to stomach mom and the serial dating and the parties.

He wasn't there anymore. She didn't have a life and she didn't have a reason to stick around.

Well she could fix both of those things in one go, now couldn't she?

* * *

"Are you sure?" Thalia asked. Attacks had been getting more frequent –Thalia's scent was holding most of the responsibility for that- and after Halcyon's mansion they were both plenty on edge. Luke might just be warping shadows into monster psychologically.

Luke nodded. "Something down here. I sense it."

A rumble echoed from the alley, like someone had banged on a sheet of metal. She and Luke crept forward.

Old crates were stacked on a loading dock. They raised their weapons and winked at each other, their signal that they were ready for action. A curtain of corrugated tin quivered as if something were behind it.

Thalia glanced at Luke. He was already counting. At three he ripped the tin, and a little girl flew at him with a hammer.

"Whoa!" Luke said. If Luke had a second of experience less, he would've been brained by this little girl who couldn't be more than seven.

_Seven… _Thalia thought. _Only a year older then… Gods damn, now is not the time to think of numbers that only mean numbers at this point. _She scolded herself.

The little girl fought and kicked once Luke had grabbed her wrist and her hammer had skittered across the cement.

"No more monsters! Go away!"

"It's okay!" Luke struggled to hold her. She was terrified and feisty. Her hair was tangled and sandy blond, albeit dirty, and she was wearing flannel pyjamas. "Thalia, put your shield up. You're scaring her."

Scared. Scared was something she knew how to fix.

She tapped Aegis and it shrank back into a bracelet. "Hey, it's all right," she said. "We're not going to hurt you. I'm Thalia. This is Luke."

"Monsters!"

"No," Luke promised. "But we know all about monsters. We fight them too."

Thalia shot him a look. She didn't want Luke to scare the poor girl more, but slowly she stopped kicking. She studied them with large intelligent grey eyes.

"You're like me?" she said suspiciously.

"Yeah," Luke said. It was safe to assume that she was a demigod at this point. No seven year old ran around with a hammer yelling about monsters, and Thalia was pretty sure she'd read something about a grey eyed goddess. Or maybe Zeus had told her when he'd been around, back when Jason was little- that's how she knew most of the things that had recently saved her life. Either way; it was Athena, goddess of wisdom and craft and war strategy. This definitely made sense.

She made eye contact with Luke and mouthed 'Athena'. He knew who she was, or at least the gist of her realm. Matched up with his charisma and people skill, he'd be fine to connect with her.

Luke started again. "We're… well, it's hard to explain, but we're monster fighters. Where's your family?"

"My family hates me," the girl said. "They don't want me. I ran away."

Thalia and Luke looked at each other instinctively, relating. Thalia shivered. Goodness gracious, she was _way _too young for this... If that little girl had ran away at that age and Thalia had been anywhere near her… she'd have caught up with her.

"What's your name, kiddo?" Thalia asked.

"Annabeth."

Luke smiled at her, reassuringly. The little charmer. "Nice name. I tell you what, Annabeth- you're pretty fierce. We could use a fighter like you."

Sinking down to flattery, it was.

But Annabeth's eyes widened. "You could?"

It made her think so much of Jason, the way he always wanted to do things right to make Thalia and his babysitter and their mother happy- whether it was 'cleaning up' or 'helping make dinner' or 'bringing in the groceries'. It made her think of how proud he was whenever he managed to do anything.

"Oh, yeah." Luke said. He offered her the handle of his knife. "How'd you like a real monster-slaying weapon? This is Celestial bronze. Works a lot better than a hammer."

Thalia died a bit inside. There was _no way _and _no circumstance whatsoever _in which it was okay to give a child a knife. She'd seen the dammage that plain old _office supplies _could do… She calmed herself down as Annabeth gripped the hilt. This was different. Sort-of. Maybe. Jason would be exactly this little girl if he were alive right then- would she give _him_ a knife?

"Knives are only for the bravest and quickest fighters," Luke explained. "They don't have the reach or power of a sword, but they're easy to conceal and they can find weak spots in your enemy's armour. It takes a clever warrior to use a knife. I have a feeling you're pretty clever."

Annabeth stared at him with adoration. She was too easy to butter up, Thalia would have to fix that. "I am!"

Thalia grinned. "We'd better get going, Annabeth. We have a safe house on the James River. We'll get you some clothes and food." She wanted that little girl with a full stomach and dry, warm clothes ASAP. Her mama bear instincts were dusting themselves off, punching through the cage she'd locked them up with after her brother had disappeared, and kicking in.

"You're… you're not going to take me back to my family?" She said. "Promise?"

There was dread in her voice. Thalia was hurt that nobody back home had given Annabeth a reason to want to be home.

Luke put his hand on her shoulder. "You're part of _our _family now. And I promise I won't let anything hurt you. I'm _not _going to fail you like our families did us. Deal?"

"Deal!" Annabeth said happily.

"Now, come on," Thalia said. "We can't stay put for long!"

* * *

"Just a little farther!" Luke promised.

Annabeth stumbled behind Thalia. She was watching the scrambling little girl from the corner of her eye. Before she even had to say anything, Luke took her hand to keep her on her feet. Luke had some papa-bear instincts of his own... It nearly made Thalia jealous, but she remembered how little Luke had to be happy for anyways. Besides; Annabeth was not Jason. She didn't have the same responsability as she used to- her entire life had been a series of constant self-reminders of that.

Thalia brought up the rear brandishing Aegis, expecting the horrible dark centaurs to burst out of the shadows. The thought kept her on her feet, kept her protecting the others despite the wound on her thigh and the pain shooting up and down her leg from it and now –alarmingly- around her waist. Was that slow, creeping spread of pain poison from a blade or venom? Neither would have surprised Thalia.

They scrambled to a ridge and looked down the other side at a white Colonial house. Where Luke had grown up, apparently.

"All right," Luke said, breathing hard. "I'll just sneak in and grab some food and medicine. Wait here."

"Luke, are you sure?" Thalia asked. "You swore you'd never come back here. If she catches you-"

"We don't have a choice!" he growled. "They burned our nearest safe house."

Damn centaurs. She hated monsters that were smart. They were already bigger and more powerful than demigods, brains didn't need to be sprinkled on the top.

"-And you've got to treat that leg wound."

"This is your house?" Annabeth said with amazement. She was looking at the place like it was Candy Land.

"It _was _my house," Luke muttered so Thalia didn't think Annabeth heard. "Believe me, if it wasn't an emergency-"

"Is your mom really horrible?" Annabeth asked in her flood of innocent albeit blunt curiosity. "Can we see her?"

"No!" Luke snapped.

Annabeth shrank away from him, surprised and hurt by his anger.

Thalia clamped a hand on the little girl's shoulder and shot Luke a menacing look.

_I don't care how rough it is for you to be at your mother's house Luke Benjamin Castellan you do _not _yell at Annabeth, you do _not _scare Annabeth and you do _not _take out your anger at Annabeth. You and I will have words when she's in bed and those words will be loud and menacing and generally unpleasant._

"I… I'm sorry," he said after getting every single meaning behind her murderous look. "Just wait here. I promise everything will be okay. Nothing's going to hurt you. I'll be back-"

A brilliant golden flash illuminated the woods. Thalia turned Annabeth away from its source as the demigods winced. A man's voice boomed: "You should not have come home."

* * *

Annabeth was playing with a Medusa beanbag. Thalia focused on that instead of the fact that Luke's mother –his not very sane mother- was bandaging his leg. She was also trying not to listen in on what was going on through the kitchen doorway.

"Why show yourself now?" Luke demanded. She heard the edginess in his voice; he was expecting to have to fight against Hermes, obviously. "All these years I've been calling to you, praying you'd show up, and nothing. You left me with _her." _

Thalia could relate to that feeling. A father who was almighty, a father who could do anything, fix any problem, give everything you couldn't get anywhere else. A mother who could do none of those things, barely accomplish the strict minimal. She had more than once come close to telling Luke that it was _that _much worst when you weren't the only one left behind- that it was worth when you couldn't take care of yourself, but nor could a little boy that was now under your responsibility if you clambered down the list of people who could possibly be of use.

Maybe he had an idea with Annabeth?

Annabeth was eating a cookie right now, looking at both of them and asking scientifically pertinent questions about what exactly Mrs. Castellan was putting on Thalia's leg.

"Luke, do not dishonour her," Hermes warned. "Your mother did the best she could."

Thalia bit her lips. Zeus had told her in all honesty that her mother couldn't do what was needed to be done, and he'd asked Thalia to help Jason as much as she could. At least her father was honest with her, and he knew what had to be done and how to make sure it got down.

He was only a coward for not doing it himself.

"As for me, I could not interfere with your path. The children of the gods must find their own way."

Thalia nearly punched Hermes. That must be Hera's attitude too, if she'd separated a two year old from his mother –and more importantly his sister- and dropped him off gods-knew-where away from any chance of getting saved. It wasn't fair. Children of the gods weren't gods, they were children. Children after all; children who were expected to be gods but still denied the rightful treatment of a god.

"So it was for my own good. Growing up on the streets, fending for myself, fighting monsters."

"You're my son," Hermes said.

Zeus had said that too _you are my daughter. _As if that made her able to… to have leadership, to be mature, to take care of people, to be brave and fierce. That wasn't true. It was having to pick between being those things and dying that made her able to accomplish what Zeus wanted from her. It wasn't some kind of genetically inherited awesomeness and power. "I knew you had the ability." Zeus had also said that to her once. Maybe there were standard speeches. Like fill-in-the-blank stencils for everything. Would Jason have gotten the same speech? No. Thalia would have given him a safe place to become powerful and grown up. He never would have had to worry about anything. She would have protected him. The world was too rough.

"When I was only a baby, I crawled from my cradle and set out for-"

"I'm not a god! Just once, you could've said something. You could've helped when" –he took an unsteady breath and his voice lowered, so Thalia didn't hear the rest. She imagined that it was something about his mother's… 'fits' or whatever they were.

May was still chatting up a storm about a habit Luke had as a baby of grabbing things, and so she had to keep her hair pinned up and the curtains behind couches or tied together, but he'd taken out her sister's curtains five seconds after heading into her house once.

Annabeth was examining a burnt cookie and not drinking her Kool-Aid. Thalia wasn't touching it either. She wasn't sure if Kool-Aid had expiration dates, but if it had- this one had passed it.

Crud, had she ever thought of that before? Had she checked expiration dates on tiny things like that before?

She leaned back into her chair. Everything was so much harder on the days that the memory of Jason was blooming.

"What?" Luke asked. "What about my destiny?"

Thalia panicked way before Luke burst out of the kitchen, called them up and marched out of his childhood home.

* * *

Thalia sat down next to him. They didn't have a safe house, but they'd found a fallen tree and had quickly made a lean-on shelter for the night. Annabeth was curled up on the ground. Her cheek was covered in dirt because she'd rolled around in her sleep. Thalia would have to run nightmare interference anytime now; she recognised the signs and symptoms.

But she crawled out and sat next to Luke, who was taking the guard shift and poking the fire with a stick.

"Hey," she said upturning a log and sitting down next to him.

"What do you want?" He asked more gruffly than usual.

"I want you to talk to me," Thalia said. "Obviously something went horribly wrong. I didn't hear what, but…"

"It's none of your business," Luke growled.

"Even if I'm your best friend?" Thalia asked. "Even if we've been on the run together for –hmm, how much time again? Oh yeah; five years. Even if it's killing you inside to keep it all in?"

Luke didn't reply. Thalia pulled out her secret weapon, once she knew would work against anyone who was in their situation.

"Don't you think you rather get it out of your system before morning comes and Annabeth wakes up? You and I both know that you might lash out on her again."

Luke buried his face in his hands. "I didn't mean to," he said.

"Of course not," Thalia said. "You never want to hurt a little kid. But sometimes you do. And when you do, you've got to man up and apoogise for it and make it better."

Luke nodded. "I'll steal her a candy bar tomorrow."

"You do that all the time. It's not special."

"It is if I find a Mars bar," Luke said.

Thalia smiled.

"You know, you're really good with kids," Luke said. "I know that Annabeth tends to sticky-glue to me, but that's just because I'm a guy and basically a specimen she's observing. You're the one that she wants around her when poo hits the fan. You rock. You're the one who knows what you're doing, how to handle her, how to keep her healthy and tell when she's sick…"

"Yeah," Thalia said. Her mouth was beginning to dry. "Maybe I am."

"Did you volunteer with kids before?" Luke said. "And I know that we have a no-prying rule and I out of all people shouldn't be breaking it right now, but did you have any mortal half-siblings?"

Her mouth was definitely dry.

Her brain spun like tires in dirt and she tended to focus on the past on July 1st (Jason's birthday), October 5th (day that he'd gotten the stappler scar), February 2nd (day that she'd found out she was having a sibling) or August 6th (day he'd dissapear). The memory of Jason should have been happy -all the toothless smiles and sparkly eyes and childish lisps et cetera. But really it hurt. That's why she kept it to herself. If it was out in the open, out in the air, it would always be there instead of just locked away in a deep corner of her memory in which it would escape in her dreams and on her bad days. It was hard to keep a secret, but it was harder to look away from general knowledge.

But to treasure Annabeth's childhood while it lasted? To remember to go along with make-believe games on the few occasions when her childish instincts to disconnect from the real world and associated crap would take over? Recalling the words of lullabies and spitting them out as naturally as if you spoke the language of sweet dreams and reassurance? To remember a thousand and one ways to force vegetables into a kid? Those things were easier done with Jason's memory in her heart.

So that's where she kept him.

In her heart.

"Nah," Thalia said. "Must be instincts."

* * *

It was raining. Pouring, as a matter of fact. Actually- Thalia didn't _know _what the weather was doing, but it was horrible. Luke had Annabeth with him, and their (or her?) muttering seeker was bringing all of them towards Camp Half-Blood.

She was limping. She was behind. The monsters were trailing them. Her friends were exhausted- they needed a few extra minutes to get behind the property lines- _if _this random satyr, Grover or whatever, was right.

She heard barking. She willed some lightning to touch the earth not far behind her, but the barking continued. Her mind was blurry, she couldn't hold the monsters off that way much longer.

Annabeth gasped. She looked over her shoulder- hair plastered to her face- and utterly, unquestionably terrified.

That rang alarm bells in Thalia's mind. No. She did _not _do terrified kids. She slayed monsters and fought dragons, she kissed away the scrapes on knees. She made vegetables taste good and she made the monsters under the bed run for their money. She read bedtime stories and made up the best, sang the nicest lullabies and baked the nicest birthday cakes. All of these things, Jason had told her. Some of these things Annabeth had also said, but above all these were all Jason's lines.

No.

She. Did. Not. Do. Scared. And. Endangered. Kids.

She deployed Argus.

"I'll hold them off- go on without me!" She told Luke and Grover.

* * *

"I thought that Artemis said no jewellery," the new recruit -Lacy- said.

Thalia's fingers twirled the long chain of her necklace.

"I'm an exception," she said. Lacy looked at the pendant, dangling over Thalia's silver jacket.

"Are there pictures in it?"

"Mmm-hmm," Thalia said. She oppened up the charm and extended it towards Lacy.

"A boy?" she gasped.

"He's not a boy, he's my brother," Thalia said. "And those are his kids… they look like him, huh?"

"Yeah. He's quite the looker himself- if I'm allowed to say that."

She smiled, shut the locket and dropped it back. It bounced against her chest and came to a rest over Thalia's heart.


End file.
